My husband has agreed to start seeing a therapist

This is such a huge victory in my attempt to help us both cope. He's going for depressive symptoms, but still, it's a beginning. I'm so glad about it. I offered to go with and in truth I'd like to but I realize therapy is a very personal thing and he might not ask me to. I have such high hopes that this will help him embrace his DID too.

Horray! That's such wonderful news!

Glad to hear it. And kudos to you for supporting him as he starts his journey.

Great news. Best of luck to him.

Bourbon

Congratulations, this is great news and a huge step towards his mental health. It's important that he build a relationship of trust with the therapist. If the therapist is reluctant to deal with DID or worse, doesn't believe in it (there are some out there), the work could go off course. So I would think of this as a struggle won within the bigger journey. I was going to say a battle within a larger war, but that may not be helpful wording. I would say that the reluctance your husband has shown suggests his walls are thick, but you are helping to break them down. I'm not a religious person at all, but I feel like it fits to say "bless you, he's a lucky man."

For many, admitting DID to oneself means admitting you are crazy. Objectively that's not at all true of course, DID is a coping mechanism, not insanity, but subjectively it often feels like that. Admitting DID also means that one has to admit one has other personalities in their mind and body, that they're not alone, a very disturbing thought for those who aren't used to the idea. Admitting DID also means that one has to admit that awful things happened to oneself, things that the person so strongly could not allow to happen or was not willing to remember happening that the memories were segregated into a separate identity. So DID is the avoidance or self-protection mechanism to block painful events and not acknowledging or admitting the DID is the avoidance mechanism later in life.

You know best how to deal with your husband and how your husband is dealing with therapy. But I would suggest not letting too much time pass before finding out as much as possible about the therapist and his/her stance on or abilities regarding DID. I speak only from my own life history, but it took me over three decades of misguided therapy to discover and finally confirm that I had DID and I would caution against allowing the wrong therapist to put your husband on the wrong track.

I want to second what John said about the transition from denial to acceptance being incredibly difficult and painful for the person with DID. It helped me immensely that when I wavered, when I had fits of denial, my husband did not waver with me. In and of itself DID has nothing to do with insanity; reality testing is fully intact, it is just that our reality is bizarre. DID expert Dr. Richard Kluft sometimes refers to DID not as multiple personality disorder but as multiple reality disorder.

Beware what Richard Kluft also calls it: multiple therapist disorder. A client with DID can have a profound influence on the mental state of the therapist. If the therapist dissociates and switches self states freely along with the client, and is not aware of doing it, chaos can ensue. This generally is very much not therapeutic. This does not mean the therapist has DID, only that the therapist is highly empathetic but not equipped to handle a client with DID.

Una+ wrote:Beware what Richard Kluft also calls it: multiple therapist disorder. A client with DID can have a profound influence on the mental state of the therapist. If the therapist dissociates and switches self states freely along with the client, and is not aware of doing it, chaos can ensue. This generally is very much not therapeutic. This does not mean the therapist has DID, only that the therapist is highly empathetic but not equipped to handle a client with DID.

How interesting. I can completely see how that might happen. I have never thought of that. Thanks for alerting me to this!!